Disc priest healing during aoe

[emni]

Cascade is amazing if you know how to use it. With enough crit, you can use it to pre-shield your whole raid group in a 25-man setting.

And for the last time, Cascade hits 31 people NOT 15, stop living in 5.3

[Deleted]

Cascade is amazing if you know how to use it. With enough crit, you can use it to pre-shield your whole raid group in a 25-man setting.

And for the last time, Cascade hits 31 people NOT 15, stop living in 5.3

That would be 100% crit, right?

Does anyone know how many targets WoD DS/Halo/Cascade will hit?

[kenn9530]

um sry wat

cascade is terrible, 9 times out of 10 most of the healing it would do is wasted and its not even great at getting DA out on ppl, while halo when used right can heal at least 2 times as much and cap out DA on multiple ppl, DS is just OP on any stacked fight, plus you get extra damage from both DS and Halo where as cascade can only be used for 1 thing at a time.

Cascade is amazing if you know how to use it. With enough crit, you can use it to pre-shield your whole raid group in a 25-man setting.

And for the last time, Cascade hits 31 people NOT 15, stop living in 5.3

Halo can cap out DA on multiple ppl where as cascade will be lucky to break much past half of the DA cap, so any fight where DS is not suitable its stupid to select cascade. Cascade will only hit every person in the raid once anyway and even with trinket procs and such active the heal will be lucky to break 200k.

[Yumae]

I've found Cascade useful on a number of fights, primarily for the fact that it will almost always hit for optimal amounts, whereas halo depends on your ability to position well enough to hit the entire raid at about 25ish yards away. I used Cascade on HSiegecraft to good results, choosing it over Halo because 1)Halo kept fucking me, whenever I'd run out of the group to Halo ranged and melee I'd get targeted by a mechanic and leave sawblades/fire in bad spots, and 2) There were times when I wasn't in range of melee, but a small group of other people were, so I could use Cascade bouncing off that group to hit everyone. I'm guessing the response to this will be, "well your group's siegecraft strat sucks," but regardless I found Cascade useful and used it for our kill. I've also been using it on H Paragons thus far.

For a list of fights, I've been using:

Imm: Cascade
Prot: Halo
Nor: Divine Star
Sha: Halo
Gal: Halo
Jugg: Halo
Shams: Divine Star
Naz: Halo
Malk: Halo
Spoils: Halo
Thok: Divine Star
Siege: Cascade
Paragons: Cascade
Garrosh: No heroic kill yet

[Deleted]

Imm: Cascade
Prot: Halo
Nor: Divine Star
Sha: Halo
Gal: Halo
Jugg: Halo
Shams: Divine Star
Naz: Halo
Malk: Halo
Spoils: Halo
Thok: Divine Star
Siege: Cascade
Paragons: Cascade
Garrosh: No heroic kill yet

Purely academic, but why do you select Halo on Protectors / Gal / Jugg? I guess it might be different on 25 man but in 10 man I see more use using Divine Star here. Generally with Protectors it is easy enough to aim Divine Star and feels more useful during the stacked moments on the encounter. The same goes on Jugg; I find it really smooths out Siege Mode knockbacks.

At the moment the group I raid with are concentrating on Spoils. We had a good bit of downtime recently as well as main raiders not being able to attend due to personal reasons but I'd be interested on hearing why you feel Halo is better here!

[Yumae]

Purely academic, but why do you select Halo on Protectors / Gal / Jugg? I guess it might be different on 25 man but in 10 man I see more use using Divine Star here. Generally with Protectors it is easy enough to aim Divine Star and feels more useful during the stacked moments on the encounter. The same goes on Jugg; I find it really smooths out Siege Mode knockbacks.

At the moment the group I raid with are concentrating on Spoils. We had a good bit of downtime recently as well as main raiders not being able to attend due to personal reasons but I'd be interested on hearing why you feel Halo is better here!

On those fights I use Halo for the sake of being able to hit the entire raid, though I could definitely see a case being made for Divine Star depending on how you stack (and definitely for Galakras). Protectors everyone is spread out in a semicircle, and it's very easy for me to position myself where I'll hit the entire raid at about 25 yards. Galakras we stack in two lines for the fireballs at the end, and I prefer halo for being able to hit both lines completely (the disc we had previously used Star there though to good effects as well). Jugg is similar to Protectors in that the raid is spread out in several groups such that it would be hard to hit a good number of them with Star, so I use Halo. Could definitely see star working on them though if your raid just stacks differently.

EDIT: I'm also 25, so the raid is spread a bit more for these fights than it probably is on 10.

[emni]

Halo can cap out DA on multiple ppl where as cascade will be lucky to break much past half of the DA cap, so any fight where DS is not suitable its stupid to select cascade. Cascade will only hit every person in the raid once anyway and even with trinket procs and such active the heal will be lucky to break 200k.

Both Halo and Cascade are great spells, but both useful for different situations. If you're not using Cascade on some fights then you're honestly doing it wrong.

You are forgetting that no priest heals in a vacuum, especially in a 25-man you need to play off your strengths and let other healers use theirs. On hc Nazgrim for example I always use Cascade because we minimize the amount of War Songs so that there's very few per fight and I'd hardly ever use Halo. Our shamans and monks can heal up the damage of the few that we do have very quickly. My Cascade meanwhile on cooldown takes care of all the splash damage that goes out and Yu'lon trinket makes it shield like crazy.

Check out the top ranking discs on WoL.

The amount of arguing in here makes me think people are just too lazy to switch talents per fight. All of the lvl90 talents have their place, use them.

[Tarien]

I gave Halo a go on Heroic Sha of Pride last night and I will be honest I r disappoint.

The healing output wasn't significantly better than Cascade, and having to position myself center to cast it was an annoyance. It might work better on Malkorok where I don't have to move so much. I was also having mana issues with Halo, I suspect that it's the interaction with the LMG, ie with 3x as many DS casts or 2x as many Cascade casts per ~45s I am more likely to get free casts thanks to the LMG, but with Halo I am more likely to miss it (I should really track it). Also if I was using DS although 3x 13,500 mana is the same as 1x Halo at 40,500 mana, the two extra GCD waits to cast the next spells is regen time.

I still find I prefer Cascade, I think the issue people have with it is casting it about 4s prior to heavy raid wide AoE and ensuring they target a friendly player (I just macro mine to myself), also looking at the fights some people use it on it seems they are using it at the wrong times.

All this discussion about using Halo to preshield seems a little backwards since surely the shields proc from your critical heals not your overheals, so using Halo to heal the raid re-actively AND also shield them is definitely possible and will net the highest HPS, unless you want to minimize the damage taken (ie it might be lethal) then I guess that is viable.

Draco's hand wringing about people focusing on high HPS and not on 'beating the boss' also seems to defy common sense. In an age of smart heals you want to put out the most HPS possible, because then the smart heals target anyone low - your bread and butter isn't sniping the low targets any more like it's Vanilla/TBC, as Disc priests we spam a quick PW:S/PoM/FH as needed, but by and large I think that maintaining high output is definitely the way to go, because smart heals take care of the low health players.

The only exception is anyone taking very heavy constant damage that might need a lot of attention, like tanks. Those you might assign healers to.

However I am going to reiterate my original points, simplified:

1) What works for others may not work for you, so don't act like your way is the right way but also don't assume that someone else's way is the best.
2) What is works best is determined by your raid size, healer composition, the fight and how your raid tackles that fight. Think about the spell mechanics and how they will work given these factors.
3) Experiment, try all three spells and check their healing contribution in Recount or on worldoflogs.com etc.

The best players are always those that spend time figuring out what works and why and how to improve, and not blindly following the advice of others.

[Deleted]

It's not about whoring meters with more casts.
It's about making sure people live through the swell with a burst before every one rather than multiple casts of cascade during the "luls" in damage that could easily be kept up with atonement/other healers, especially on Sha.
The only time I've seen people die on Sha other than being caught at lower hp during a swell is standing in like 3 crashes like a retard, running into walls/sha beasts in maze or not getting dispelled + trapped in a prison for too long.

[Talhooo]

Well, he's right.

I'd trust his opinion over basically anyone else in this thread. There's a difference between a person having beliefs forced on them, and someone putting their hands over their eyes and pretending the arguments don't exist.

I haven't read everything, I just skimped over most stuff. He is right about pre-casting cascade/halo before dmg. There's a few reasons he mentioned, but I'd like to add that with 7.5k spirit it is also important to use it together with mana meta gem procc or you just run oom. So combo'ing this with the procc is almost impossible to do after damage. Also our shields from cascade/halo do so much more "healing mitigation" than the actual heals that it would be a waste to cast if after damage. On a lot of bosses your divine aegis will have done nothing because there's almost no more dmg after the spike.

I can't agree on the halo/cascade discussion, except for malkorok obviously. I do see potential in sha of pride. But if you skimp over top logs on WoL, you can easily see cascade is king and not halo. There's a chance it's a tactic difference and healer composition difference but I don't think so. Halo seems bad anyway in my healing team, we're always healing with 3 discs :S. If you all 3 use it at the same time, you'd go way over DA cap

[Hypasonic]

Top logs on Warcraft logs are all using Star, and DA doesn't share a cap between discs.

[Dracodraco]

I gave Halo a go on Heroic Sha of Pride last night and I will be honest I r disappoint.

The healing output wasn't significantly better than Cascade, and having to position myself center to cast it was an annoyance. It might work better on Malkorok where I don't have to move so much. I was also having mana issues with Halo, I suspect that it's the interaction with the LMG, ie with 3x as many DS casts or 2x as many Cascade casts per ~45s I am more likely to get free casts thanks to the LMG, but with Halo I am more likely to miss it (I should really track it). Also if I was using DS although 3x 13,500 mana is the same as 1x Halo at 40,500 mana, the two extra GCD waits to cast the next spells is regen time.

It all depends on practice, really. I don't even notice moving into position to cast halo anymore, while you aren't used to it and find it an annoyance. Also, the mana difference despite regen is really non existant. You really won't feel it any more with Halo than with Dstar, except halo is "all at once", while dstar is draining you in smaller amounts more often.
As for the gem, yes, you should be tracking it. It'll help you a fair bit (along with giving you an idea if you can hold halo for a few seconds to try and force a proc from the gem - it doesn't proc from solace/smite, so if you're atonementing you can delay penance for a bit and almost guarantee to proc the gem when you need it).

I still find I prefer Cascade, I think the issue people have with it is casting it about 4s prior to heavy raid wide AoE and ensuring they target a friendly player (I just macro mine to myself), also looking at the fights some people use it on it seems they are using it at the wrong times.

I have no issues targetting friendly players (I have all my heals bound to mouseclicks on vuhdo), but all in all, it still feels far too slow.

All this discussion about using Halo to preshield seems a little backwards since surely the shields proc from your critical heals not your overheals, so using Halo to heal the raid re-actively AND also shield them is definitely possible and will net the highest HPS, unless you want to minimize the damage taken (ie it might be lethal) then I guess that is viable.

I don't think you've understood what is being discussed. I never said that pre shielding with halo would net the highest HPS, I said that the best way to play was to get in the habit of pre-shielding lethal damage (like swell), which you say yourself is a possibility. I just think that's far better than trying to up your meters.

Draco's hand wringing about people focusing on high HPS and not on 'beating the boss' also seems to defy common sense. In an age of smart heals you want to put out the most HPS possible, because then the smart heals target anyone low - your bread and butter isn't sniping the low targets any more like it's Vanilla/TBC, as Disc priests we spam a quick PW:S/PoM/FH as needed, but by and large I think that maintaining high output is definitely the way to go, because smart heals take care of the low health players.

I agree that HPS is a big part of healing, but there's a few things you do not consider;
A lot of the "heavy absorbtion" disc does is tied to insane mana costs (PW:S spam) or semi-long cooldowns (apart from divine star, of course). You can still accomplish a very high amount of HPS by just atonementing and smarthealing (which is why other healers are so pissed at disc), and should of course always do that. But using your "raid saving" abilities to just counter small, irrellevant raid dmg when you could sit on them for a little longer to counter big things you'd want heavy cds for is what I'm at.

Let's take Paragons for example. During progress, if you didn't have an intricate soaking rotation, or a ton of rogues, or a good disc priest, you were fucked due to aim. A good disc could alternate spirit shell and halo+inner focus PoH on the soak group, though, thus ensuring stable AIM soaks (this was before abilities could prevent it, and when you had less space to soak due to the splash hitting the target etc).
Now, the most intense healing during AIM is when there's a ton of parasites up who goes on random targets, ticking away for a ton (while multi shot was hitting random targets, too). This is where you, as a disc, would have a choise -
You either save up your halo, spirit shell, and inner focus to ensure stable AIM soaks so that the group never dies, and rely on your other healers + your own "normal" healing to keep the raid alive.
Or you start spending your cds to combat the raid damage by absorbing it, leaving the soak group very exposed to sudden oneshots, and during your "big healing" cds, making the other healers obsolete for a few seconds (cos absorbing damage means that the 4 other healers could do nothing).

What would you choose to do in the above scenario? For me atleast, it's always going to be the first option. The constant ticking damage of the parasites + multi shots can/could be combatted by healing cds (tranq, AG, VE), Aura masteries (parasites are nature dmg), barrier/smokebomb (on the melee, 50% of the raid) and the likes - the only effective raid CD you could use to help the soaking group is rallying cry + demo banner, and of course, disc absorbtion.
Would it provide me highest hps? Not by a long shot <.<.

However I am going to reiterate my original points, simplified:

1) What works for others may not work for you, so don't act like your way is the right way but also don't assume that someone else's way is the best.
2) What is works best is determined by your raid size, healer composition, the fight and how your raid tackles that fight. Think about the spell mechanics and how they will work given these factors.
3) Experiment, try all three spells and check their healing contribution in Recount or on worldoflogs.com etc.

The best players are always those that spend time figuring out what works and why and how to improve, and not blindly following the advice of others.

I agree with all 3 points, but that doesn't mean that discussion and different viewpoints aren't both great and healthy, as long as it remains civil =P. That's what forums are for, after all. I'll even try Cascade out next reset just to see if it makes any major difference, as it's peaked my curiosity now.

It's not about whoring meters with more casts.
It's about making sure people live through the swell with a burst before every one rather than multiple casts of cascade during the "luls" in damage that could easily be kept up with atonement/other healers, especially on Sha.
The only time I've seen people die on Sha other than being caught at lower hp during a swell is standing in like 3 crashes like a retard, running into walls/sha beasts in maze or not getting dispelled + trapped in a prison for too long.

This guy gets me <3

I haven't read everything, I just skimped over most stuff. He is right about pre-casting cascade/halo before dmg. There's a few reasons he mentioned, but I'd like to add that with 7.5k spirit it is also important to use it together with mana meta gem procc or you just run oom. So combo'ing this with the procc is almost impossible to do after damage. Also our shields from cascade/halo do so much more "healing mitigation" than the actual heals that it would be a waste to cast if after damage. On a lot of bosses your divine aegis will have done nothing because there's almost no more dmg after the spike.

I can't agree on the halo/cascade discussion, except for malkorok obviously. I do see potential in sha of pride. But if you skimp over top logs on WoL, you can easily see cascade is king and not halo. There's a chance it's a tactic difference and healer composition difference but I don't think so. Halo seems bad anyway in my healing team, we're always healing with 3 discs :S. If you all 3 use it at the same time, you'd go way over DA cap

To be honest, I have to disagree with your mana comment. Once again - if you're ever running low on mana as a disc (especially with gear like yours Talho, 580 ilvl. I am jelly) you're doing something very, very wrong. A quick glance comparing some of your recent logs to mine:
Protectors -
Talho: 97k dps, 250K healing.
Draco: 135K dps, 262K healing.
Sha of pride -
Talho: 79K dps, 205K healing.
Draco: 121K dps, 219K healing.
Iron juggernaut -
Talho: 82K dps, 281K healing.
Draco: 113K dps, 276K healing.
Thok -
Talho: 69K dps, 347K healing.
Draco: 88K dps, 439K healing.
Paragons -
Talho: 73K dps, 141K healing.
Draco: 113K dps, 174K healing.


Mind that you've got multiple discs while I'm solo, so that'd probably close the HPS-gap somewhat, so don't worry about that - it's purely there to show how much dps you're doing comparable to HPS.
What I find alarming is the amount of DPS you're doing, with that amount of gear - no number of discs should ever be able to lower that. Which seems to imply that you utilise a far more mana-taxing playstyle (Lots of shields/POH usage outside of rapture and spirit shell), which is going to be extremely taxing on your mana for extremely small returns in terms of HPS.
So, essentially, what I'm saying is that if you think mana is an issue, you might want to look at your playstyle rather than the lvl 90 talent usages. As has been previously mentioned, 3x dstar has the same cost as 1x halo, so in general, you'll end up spending the same amount of mana on 90 talents.

Top logs on Warcraft logs are all using Star, and DA doesn't share a cap between discs.

about 80% sure he ment that if 3 discs hits someone in the face with a 400K shield each, no boss is going to end up using those shields all up before they run out - thus hitting a "cap" of damage you can absorb, limited by the amount of incoming damage.

[Vilkaza]

I've seen some logs where, by a huge margin, divine aegis is the highest heal. Are top healers generally getting those huge bubbles simply from atonement, or are they casting lots of PoH or something to build up the DA? I can't see them doing that during phases where damage isn't going out, because it is a huge mana drain, and many top healers reforge almost entirely out of spirit into crit/mastery.

[Hypasonic]

They are getting those big DA absorbs from their 90 talents mainly, atonement does give a decent amount of DA but not as much as those, and its not worth casting PoH without IF in 25m (as an adsorb mechanic), but 10m has its differences. Just depends which logs you're looking at. Spirit is something all top disc priests reforge out of, because they simply don't need it. Clever use of meta proc combined with rapture usage and mindbender ensures this.

[Talhooo]

Yes Draco, I do seem to have a different playstyle. I never said I had problems with mana, but I do play to end the fight with 0 mana. My "low" dps doesn't worry me at all, it's just a different playstyle compared to you. If im not mistaken you even seems to be "the weird one" out with that high dps. I haven't seen that many discs nowadays playing pure atonement after the nerf. Are you playing with 2 stats increase trinks btw ?
I wouldn't look into my logs to deep, after garrosh being on farm for 3months now, this week was extremely boring (aka bad) for me. For thok & paragons I was still wearing my Holy gear from malkorok :S wrong trinkets and such.

[Dracodraco]

Yes Draco, I do seem to have a different playstyle. I never said I had problems with mana, but I do play to end the fight with 0 mana. My "low" dps doesn't worry me at all, it's just a different playstyle compared to you. If im not mistaken you even seems to be "the weird one" out with that high dps. I haven't seen that many discs nowadays playing pure atonement after the nerf. Are you playing with 2 stats increase trinks btw ?
I wouldn't look into my logs to deep, after garrosh being on farm for 3months now, this week was extremely boring (aka bad) for me. For thok & paragons I was still wearing my Holy gear from malkorok :S wrong trinkets and such.

Well, you kind of did say that mana would be an issue if you were to use Halo - I quote:

with 7.5k spirit it is also important to use it together with mana meta gem procc or you just run oom

So, yea, you do say that mana is an issue.
As for me being the weird one, maybe during farm where it's all just HPS whoring anyway, but if you weren't pushing both HPS and DPS during progress, you were the odd one out :P. The reason we've had what, 2-3 disc priest trials out of maybe +20 apps in the past 2 tiers is mainly because 75% of the apps we get are "reformed" holy priests who can't optimise their damage output, which has been extremely important during progress, so we've prefered my alt.
As for playing pure atonement "after the nerf", which one are you referring to? The one that lowered atonement from 100% to 90% back in ToT, that came at the same time as the item upgrades? Or have I been oblivious to another, more recent nerf. Because discs have indeed been full atonement, especially for progress this tier.
And I haven't bothered with 2x stat increase trinkets lately. Same as you, contents been on farm forever, and I only very recently (since the launch of Reaper of souls, basicly) had to reroll back from my hunter to my disc as our "new" disc (kriegs) decided to quit WoW (came from 10 man, couldn't get used to 25/20 man prospect, so quitted the game). So admittedly, my logs are far from as good as they could be if I were pushing HPS, but right now I'm basicly focused on controlling my raiders, keeping the clear going at a decent speed, and doing whatever I can to avoid wipes etc :P. More diablo for me <3.

[Deleted]

The reason we've had what, 2-3 disc priest trials out of maybe +20 apps in the past 2 tiers is mainly because 75% of the apps we get are "reformed" holy priests who can't optimise their damage output

What advice do you have for optimising damage output?

[Dracodraco]

What advice do you have for optimising damage output?

Well, there's not really alot to it for disc priests. Essentially, make sure Penance+Solace is used on CD offensively. A defensive penance is a wasted penance. Make sure you never cast greater heal if it can be avoided (EG, emergency GH+Inner focus to place a 500K shield on a tank is acceptable). Trust in the other healers - by the time your 2sec+ Gheal cast has landed, he'll be healed up or dead either way, and your healing is pretty much wasted.
Archangel on CD (more crit + more dps).
Essentially, the basics. There's really not much more to it. Where I see people take a big hit in damage output is:
When they PoH to combat raid damage instead of trusting in the other healers with far better AOE healing tools (think protectors, norushen, juggernaut, garrosh intermissions). Your atonement is far better than your gimpy AOE healing - it saves the people who are lowest from dying due to a constant stream of hard hitting smart healing on the lowest target, where as PoH just dillutes the AOE healing from every other healer who doesn't have a viable smart healing singletarget alternative.
When you PW:S excessively to combat damage that aren't lethal (throwing it on bonecrackers on nazgrim, for example).

And that's pretty much it. Disc is very simple, there's very few ways to go around it. I happen to personally think that Atonement style is by far the strongest this tier, despite perhaps being 5-10% behind PoH/Shield spam in output, mainly because my dps is usually 60-80% ahead of those playstyles (AKA what you don't get in healing, you make up for in DPS) and I can switch to a PoH/shield spam style mid-encounter if it's needed (due to a healer death or the likes). Disc is the hybrid of the healer world, act like it :P.

[Deleted]

Well that was disappointingly sensible and simple. I thought you had some super awesome insights to share!

[Dracodraco]

Well that was disappointingly sensible and simple. I thought you had some super awesome insights to share!

Not really <.<. Disc is, as said, a very simple spec. I'm not doing odd stuff like keeping shadow word pain up or such, it's just... Keep dpsing. Never stop. I have the advantage of having played a DPS main for a few years before having to play my disc, so my mind set was "max throughput, never stop, keep on hitting stuff, DON'T FUCKING WASTE TIME". Has worked out well so far. Remember, the more smites you manage to squeeze out, the more penance you get out (because of the -.5 sec on penance per smite cast).